He entered Jericho and was passing through it.  A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.  He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.  So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”  So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.  All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."
Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."
Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

Have you ever had a major transformation experience? I mean an experience that changed the way you looked at life, the way you treated others, and the way you decided to live your life?  Have you ever had something happen to you that afterwards left you thinking that you’ll never look at life, and yourself the same way again?  If you have had an experience like that, how did it change you? 

There are a lot of experiences in life that cause people to change:war, the death of someone close, a serious illness, a divorce, losing a job, graduation, the birth of a child, and so many experience.  In fact, life is filled with life-changing experiences that can transform us either for the better or for the worse.  I’ve seen both kinds of changes many times over. 

For instance, twenty-five years ago I was working as a counselor with teens and children in a psychiatric hospital.  At one point we had a thirteen year-old boy whose older sister had died of a drug overdose.  He was having a very hard time dealing with the trauma of it, especially since she had told him several months before that if she ever died, and he didn’t let her go in his heart, she wouldn’t really be dead.  I assume that she must have known that dying was a distinct possibility.  She was living with her boyfriend, who was a drug dealer, and she was heavily involved in drugs herself.  She must have known that her lifestyle could possibly lead to death. 

This boy struggled with her death, and with the uncertainty about what would happen if he accepted that she had died.  Her death and his struggle with it actually caused him to become suicidal for a time.  He faced a trauma, and it caused him to spiral downward into a period of darkness and sadness.  Our work together had to do with trying to get him to accept her death, and to help him discover a way for him to live again.  But it was tough going because he kept making the decision to cling to his guilt over letting her go.  And this kept pushing him deeper into confusion and depression.  He had been transformed from a lighter way of living to a darker one. 

One the other hand, I have seen others who have been transformed in a very positive way through their trauma.  For instance, you may remember one of our members who died of cancer seven years ago, Bob Burek.  He was the husband of one our elders, Kathy Burek, who has since moved to Milwaukee.  A year or more before Bob joined the church, he got colon cancer.  Back in those days Bob was an agnostic, meaning that he wasn’t really all that sure God existed.  Even so, I still considered Bob a friend.  We used to talk about things such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and The Lord of the Rings, some of my favorite topics.  When he was first diagnosed with cancer, we talked about faith and healing, but Bob pretty much believed that “these things happen,” and that he would get better.  And he was right,… for a while.  He did get better, and after a round of chemotherapy, his cancer seemed to go away.  For another year he did well, but then another tumor was detected in his colon.  His cancer came back with a vengeance, and the prognosis wasn’t good.  The doctor said that basically he had only months to live.

Bob and I spoke again, and Bob decided that this time he was open to my praying with him for healing, and for our prayer ministers to do the same.  For a while Bob seemed to get better, and in fact in the midst of it all he had a spiritual awakening.  He began to experience God in his life through his relationship with Kathy, through his friendships in the church, through his daily prayers, through the prayers of the healing ministers, and through worship.  Bob decided to join the church, and for a while we were hopeful that he would get better.  Then he took a turn for the worse.  The cancer was just too strong.  His life was ebbing away.  It took several more months for Bob to die.  About a month before he died, I asked Bob if he was disappointed that the prayers for healing didn’t seem to be working.  Bob paused, and then told me that he wasn’t disappointed at all.  He said that before he got cancer he believed that God was just an idea, a crutch, that weak people used to prop themselves up in bad times.  But that had all changed because since he had gotten cancer he was now experiencing God every single day of his life.  And he wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.  He said that he hadn’t had a physical healing, but he had had spiritual healing.  He then told me that he was completely ready to die and come face-to-face with God.  Bob had been transformed.

When we go through traumatic experiences we always face a choice:  how will these experiences change us?  Will they change us for the better or the worse?  This leads to another question.  whydo so many people wait for something traumatic to happen to them before they change, especially in positive ways? Why can’t we be more like Zacchaeus?Zacchaeus is a wonderful example of the kind of person who makes the choice to change his life for the better without a crisis. 

Zacchaeus was the chief tax collector of the region, which was the region around Jericho.  Jericho was one of the wealthiest areas of the Middle East.  It was the area where all the priests of the temple in Jerusalem lived, and because the temple brought in quite a bit of money, the priests were well compensated.  In addition, it was considered a garden area.  A special variety of scented palms and plants grew naturally there, and it was known for being a place of wonderful smells and climate.  It was also on a major trade route between the rest of the Middle East and Jerusalem, meaning that people grew rich on the trade that came through the town.  Zacchaeus, as tax collector for the region, grew wealthy.  In those days tax collectors were considered to be among the worst of all sinners.  They were considered to be the greediest of the greedy, the most corrupt of the corrupt.  And the reputation all had to do with the Roman way of collecting taxes.

The ancient Romans didn’t have a tax system like we do, which is based on a percentage of our income.  Their stated taxes that were similar, but not their duty taxes.  The stated taxes were taxes like the poll tax, in which everyone between the ages of 15 and 64 paid a tax for the right to live in the Roman Empire.  Also, each person paid a 1% income tax.  Finally, farmers had to pay either a 15% tax on wheat, or a 5% tax on wine and oil production.  While the tax collectors kept a portion of these taxes, where they grew rich was from the collection of duty taxes.  Under the Roman system, the provincial governor of a region would simply tell the tax collectors what they owed the provincial government in duties.  The tax collectors were free to collect whatever amount they wanted in duty taxes as long as they gave the provincial government what was asked for.  The duties could be on anything.  It could be a duty on the right to cross a bridge.  It could be a duty on each cart, or on each wheel of a cart.  It could be a duty on the right the transport goods through a region.   Typically, tax collectors got rich by asking for as much as four times the amount they were required to collect for the empire.  Thus, tax collectors were seen as corrupt and greedy men.  They were considered to be sinners, and hated by everyone.  Zacchaeus would have been perhaps the most hated man in Jericho. 

But a funny thing happened.  As Jesus came to town, Zacchaeus was driven to go see him.  He was a short man, and you can imagine that as he pushed his way through the crowd, some who knew him would have elbowed him and shoved him.  Zacchaeus was undeterred.  He pushed back, finally making it to a tree.  He climbed, and there Jesus saw him and called to him.  We might be surprised that Jesus knew his name, but Zacchaeus was well known to all.  In being called by Jesus, Zacchaeus made a promise to Jesus.  He would pay back anyone that he had defrauded, paying them back four times.  He would also give money away to the poor.  He became a transformed man.  He went from being greedy to generous, from being selfish to being selfless. 

I look at our culture, and I see an awful lot of people who live their lives the way Zacchaeus did before he met Jesus.  Their whole focus is on being successful, making money, and in short, trying to live the American Dream.  Zacchaeus was living the American Dream 1700 years before there was even an America.  He was living a functional life.  What does that mean?  It means living in a way that reduces everything to “me,” to money, and to getting what “I” want. 

We’ve been talking in our Thursday morning men’s group about this kind of functional life.  We’ve been talking about how easy it is to detach our spirits and spirituality from our daily lives.  When we go to work, we walk into the building, and as we hang up our coats, we also hang up our spirits, choosing to live a functional life at work, only to pick up our coats and our spirits as we walk out the door.  We compartmentalize, believing that there are areas where God fits and where God doesn’t.  I suppose it would come as a surprise to God to know that there are areas God where God doesn’t belong. 

The thing that was amazing about Zacchaeus was that he was living a functional life, and in the midst of it, for no apparent reason, he decided to open up to the spiritual.  And that choice made all the difference.  He didn’t change his job, but he did change his focus.  He realized that something was missing from his life, and so he made a choice to bring balance back into it.  With that change of focus came a change of life.  He began to live according to what Paul calls the fruits of the spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Take some time to reflect on each one of these fruits.  How well do you integrate them into your life?   Are you loving in all situations, or are there areas where you think love has no role?  How joyful are you, or do you let a spirit of glumness overcome you at times?  Do you live in a sense of peace in your relationships, or do you live in division?  Would you consider yourself to be kind?  Would others?  How generous are you?  Do you consider your wealth and possessions your own to be dealt with as you like, or are you willing to share freely with others?  Are you faithful to God?  To family?  To others?  How gentle are you?  In what ways do you lack gentleness, and are you aware of these times?  And what about self-control?  Do you exert a sense of self-discipline, or do you find that you open your mouth and say things you wish you hadn’t, do thing things you wish you didn’t, act in ways you wish you wouldn’t?  To what extent do the fruits of the Spirit grow in you? 

At its core, we are called to make a choice about how we will live our lives.  Do we choose to live them in a functional way, or in a spiritual way?  Don’t wait until something serious happens, for a crisis to occur, before you make a change in your life?  Make a choice to be transformed into something better today.  Each one of us has a choice to live a transformed life just like Zacchaeus.  The question God asks is whether we are willing to do so. 

Amen.